Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman (2 page)

1951-1953

THE FIRST HOLLY

Traveling was forced upon little Truman Capote from the beginning. By the late 1920s, his mother, Lillie Mae, had made a habit of abandoning her son with relatives for months at a time while she went round and round from man to high-falutin' man. Gradually the handoffs began to hurt Truman less—either that, or he grew more accustomed to the pain—and in time, his knack for adaptation turned into something like genius. He was able to fit in anywhere.

After his parents' divorce, five-year-old Truman was sent to his aunt's house in Monroeville, Alabama. Now was Lillie Mae's chance to quit that jerkwater town and hightail it to a big city. Only there could she become the rich and adored society woman she knew she was destined to be, and probably would
have been, if it weren't for Truman, the son she never wanted to begin with. When she was pregnant, Lillie Mae—Nina, as she introduced herself in New York—had tried to abort him.

Perhaps if she had gone away and stayed away, young Truman would have suffered less. But Nina never stayed away from Monroeville for long. In a whirl of fancy fabrics, she would turn up unannounced, tickle Truman's chin, offer up an assortment of apologies, and disappear. And then, as if it had never happened before, it would happen all over again. Inevitably, Nina's latest beau would reject her for being the peasant girl she tried so hard not to be, and down the service elevator she would go, running all the way back to Truman with enormous tears ballooning from her eyes. A day or so would pass; Nina would take stock of her Alabama surroundings and once again, vanish to Manhattan's highest penthouses.

Had he been older, Truman might have stolen his heart back from his mother the way he would learn to shield it from others, but in those days he was still too young to be anything but in love with her. She said she loved him, too, and at times, like when she brought him with her to a hotel, promising that now they'd really be together, it looked to him as though she finally meant it. Imagine his surprise then when Nina locked him in the room and went next door to make money-minded love with some ritzy someone deep into the night. Truman, of course, heard everything. On one such occasion, he found a rogue vial of her perfume and with the desperation of a junkie, drank it all the way to the bottom. It didn't bring her back, but for a few pungent swallows, it brought her closer.

For the better part of Capote's career as a novelist, that
bottle—what was left of his mother—would be the wellspring of most of his creations. The idea of her, like the idea of love and the idea of home, proved a very hard thing to pin down. He tried, though. But no number of perfume bottles or whiskey bottles, no matter how deep or beautiful, could alter the fact of her absence. Nor could most of the women or men to whom Truman attached himself. They could never pour enough warmth into the void.

In consequence, Capote was equal parts yearning and vengeance, clutching at his intimates with fingers of knives that he would turn back on himself when left alone. However sharp, those fingers pulled his mother from the past and put her on the page where, in the form of language, he could remake her perfume into a bottomless fragrance called Holly Golightly. That's how Truman finally learned the meaning of permanence.

Once the reading world got a whiff of it, eau d'Holly made everyone fall in love with Truman, which, since his mother had left him that first time, was the only thing he ever wanted. That and a home—a feeling of something familiar—like an old smell, a favorite scarf, or the white rose paperweight that sat on Truman's desk as he wrote
Breakfast at Tiffany's
.

THE WHITE ROSE PAPERWEIGHT

When he was in Paris in 1948, soaking in accolades for his lurid first novel,
Other Voices
,
Other Rooms,
Truman was delivered by Jean Cocteau to Colette's apartment in the Palais Royal. She was nearing eighty, but the author of
Gigi,
the
Claudine
novels,
and countless others, was still France's grandest grande dame of literature.

In full recline, Colette, racked with arthritis, no doubt smiled at Truman's author photograph on the dust jacket of
Other Voices
. Staring out at her with his languid eyes and slick lips, the boy's salacious look was one the old woman knew well; in her day, she had rocked Paris with a few
succès de scandales
of her own, both on the page and off. Now here was this rascal with his angel's face—a hungry angel's face. How delicious. She felt for sure there existed a kind of artery between them, and even before he entered her bedroom, Truman sensed it too. “
Bonjour
,
Madame
.” “
Bonjour
.” They hardly spoke each other's language, but as he approached her bedside, their bond grew from assured to obvious. The artery was in the heart.

After the tea was served, the room got warmer, and Colette opened Truman's twenty-three-year-old hand. In it she placed a crystal paperweight with a white rose at its center. “What does it remind you of?” she asked. “What images occur to you?”

Truman turned it around in his hand. “Young girls in their communion dresses,” he said.

The remark pleased Colette. “Very charming,” she said. “Very apt. Now I can see what Jean told me is true. He said, ‘Don't be fooled, my dear. He looks like a ten-year-old angel. But he's ageless, and has a very wicked mind.'” She gave it to him, a souvenir.

Capote would collect paperweights for the rest of his life, but years later the white rose was still his favorite. Truman took it with him almost everywhere.

AUDREY AWOKEN

It all began for Audrey Hepburn in spring of 1951 on a gorgeous day like any other. She rose at dawn, had a cup of coffee in bed, and took her breakfast—two boiled eggs and a slice of whole wheat toast—to the window, where she could watch the morning people of Monte Carlo sail their yachts into the sea. Such a leisurely breakfast was a rare pleasure for her; back in England, where she had been working regularly, they started shooting at sunup. But the French liked to do things differently. They didn't really get going until
après dejeuner,
and they worked late into the night, which gave Audrey mornings to explore the beaches and casinos, and time to place a call to James, her fiancé, who was off in Canada on business—again.

He really was a very sweet boy, and attractive, and from the Hansons, a good and wealthy family. He loved her of course, and she loved him, and from the way it looked in the press, they had everything. But everything is nothing when there's no time to enjoy it. With her schedule taking her from film to film, and his seemingly endless tour of the world's ritziest boardrooms, it was beginning to look like they were betrothed in name only. Perhaps, Audrey thought, she was foolish to think she could be an actress and a wife. If she wanted to settle down—and she did, very badly—she would have to put films aside. At least, that's what James said. Only then could they really truly be together.

Somewhere in her mind they were. They had a house, two or three children, and a limitless expanse of days broken only
by sleep. Thankfully, her role in
Monte Carlo Baby
was only going to last a month. That was no small consolation.

COLETTE AWOKEN

The Hotel de Paris was unquestionably the most stunning hotel in all of Monaco. Judging from its façade, a Belle Epoque confection of arches and spires, only the absolute cream of society could make a habit of staying there. For Audrey, who had never been to the Riviera, being at the Hôtel de Paris was a thrill tempered only by her longing for James and the inanity of the film (the script was drivel; some semimusical fluff about a missing baby). But for Colette, it was nothing unusual, just another drop in the great gold bucket of luxury; she had been a regular since 1908. Now, as a guest of Prince Rainier, Colette was the palace queen, and as her wheelchair was turned down the hotel's stately corridors, that's exactly how the footmen greeted her. No doubt they saw in the old woman all the arterial fire of her novels, which seemed to throb through her from toe to
tête,
culminating in an explosion of red-broccoli hair.

The doctors sent her there to rest, but resting, for Colette, required more effort than working. Since her New York agent's assistant had taken it upon himself to single-handedly produce a play of her novel
Gigi,
Colette couldn't get the idea out of her mind. She'd even gone a little delirious trying to cast the title part and began to see Gigis everywhere—on the street, in the sea, and popping up in photographs. But none quite satisfied Colette, and time wore expensively on. Those who had invested in the project grew restless, and—as tends to be the
case in most casting legends—they were about to force the play upon a proven star, when, at the last minute, Colette was disturbed on her way to dinner.

What was about to happen would change Audrey's life forever.

To her annoyance, Colette discovered that the main dining room had been closed for the shooting of
Monte Carlo Baby
. Would she, the maître d' asked her, take her dinner in the breakfast room instead?
Absoluement non!
Insulted, Colette pushed her way right into the dining room and right into the middle of a take.

The scene stopped dead in its tracks. The crew looked up. No one breathed, except Colette. Catching sight of a strangely compelling young woman, Colette squinted through the beaming lights and raised her eyeglasses for a closer look.

Audrey, of course, had no inkling of being watched. Nor had Colette any inkling of who she was. What she did know, however, was that she seemed to have stepped into her own novel: in face, body, and poise, she was staring at Gigi come to life.

Perhaps Colette stared for full minutes, or perhaps just moments, but most likely she spoke out instantly, for as Audrey has proven millions of times since, that is all it takes for her to overcome whoever lays eyes on her. In an instant—a scientific measurement when speaking of stars—she conveyed to Colette what it took the author an entire novel to describe. That is, the story of a Parisian girl, who at sixteen, was set to undergo the education of a courtesan.

“
Voilà,
” Colette said to herself, “
c'est Gigi
.”

And like that, Audrey's transformation had begun.

“
Voilà
…” Like that.

It all sounds so magical, and indeed in a way it was, but like all perfect acts of casting, Colette's epiphany was born of more than just gut feeling—it was born from fact. Although Audrey's innate sensuality, her Gigi-ness, was written all over her, no one until Colette had seen it. Perhaps it was because of Audrey's strangeness. Her legs were too long, her waist was too small, her feet were too big, and so were her eyes, nose, and the two gaping nostrils in it. When she smiled (and she did often), she revealed a mouth that swallowed up her face and a row of jagged teeth that wouldn't look too good in close-ups. She was undoubtedly not what you would call attractive. Cute maybe, charming, for sure, but with only the slightest hint of makeup and a bust no bigger than two fists, she was hardly desirable. The poor girl was even a bit round-faced.

And yet Colette couldn't stop staring. She was fascinated.

WHAT SHE SAW PART I: THE FACE

Audrey's might not have been the face of a goddess, but like most teenagers, Gigi did not begin as a goddess. She was simply a girl on the precipice of young adulthood, full of potential, but without experience. And her eyes said that, didn't they? They were certainly on the big side, but they were also wide, and wide-eyed people have a look of perpetual curiosity. Colette's Gigi had that. So do all those who don't yet know the world. But that nose would be a problem, wouldn't it? It was not sleek or pretty in the manner of high society ladies, and neither were her hair, teeth, or thickset eyebrows. So how would such a Gigi, looking not unlike a stray puppy, gain access to the haut monde?

There was little that was womanly about her in the sexual sense, nothing that said she was capable of pleasing a man, and certainly nothing that looked ahead to the naughty insinuations of Holly Golightly.

Or was there? Was there a drop of sex someplace beneath?

Smiling now, Colette lowered her eyeglasses and leaned forward for a closer look.

WHAT SHE SAW PART II: THE BODY

The girl carried herself like a suppressed ballerina. Despite what were then considered physical imperfections, Audrey had a remarkable discipline in movement, one that told of self-possession impossibly beyond her years, and so much so that to watch her, Colette had to wonder at how a thing so young could have understood poise so completely. In her simplest gesture Audrey communicated a complete knowledge of propriety, and by extension, an inner grace that belied whatever made her look that unusual in the first place. She wasn't dancing, but she might as well have been.

EVERYTHING THAT IS IMPORTANT IN A FEMALE

“Madame?”

A flock of admirers had approached Colette. She swatted them off. (Colette would enchant them later. If she was in the mood.) The old woman reached up and pulled down an unsuspecting member of the crew.

“Who is that?” she croaked, nodding in Audrey's direction.

“That is Mademoiselle Hepburn, madame.”

“Tell her I want to speak with her.” She released him and added a touch of pink powder to her nose. “Tell them to bring her to me.”

Colette's conviction grew as she watched Mademoiselle Hepburn approach. This girl was even more startling up close than she was from afar.

“
Bonjour, madame,
” she said.

“
Bonjour
.”